Looking at the Threads

Ravil and Dick sat down and put themselves into a trance with the other monks. When they opened their eyes again they saw a countless universe of strings in front of them.

"These are the paths of history," Ravil explained. "We need to alter these strands and incorporate Dawn within them, but we must be careful."

Ravil reached up and grabbed a string, "I can pull on this a little without breaking the whole. You can see a little bit of wobble in the other strands, but the whole remains unchanged."

He then gave a hard tug and the image came crashing down before slowly reforming, "Pull too hard, and the magic will be broken. This is give and take. Karma, What we do will be balanced out by the universe in ways we may be unable to foresee."

"Not to mention our energy," Dick said. "Eventually even our willpower will become drained by the spell. Though, hopefully my idea will give us more encouragement to keep..."

He stopped talking as they heard something slam into the temple doors, "And, of course, there is the time issue."

"Where do we begin? Or when?" one of the younger monks asked.

Ravil turned the image around in circles. "Our concept of time, of beginnings and endings, does not apply here, nor do we have control over what we modify."

Ravil changed the image to show pictures. "These are those who are closest to the Slayer, or could be closest. The Key will need more than just the Slayer to protect her. Strength of course will be necessary to fight the Beast, but magic, heart, brains, creativity, and much more will be valuable. We need to ensure that the Key is surrounded by allies who will fight for her till their last breath."

"We have narrowed the allies into four groups. Those who are always present, Buffy Summers, Willow Rosenberg, and Alexander Harris. It is critical that they are united with the Key."

"However, their closeness, their presence through the timeline, means that they will be much harder to influence," Ravil added.

"Then we have those who were frequently around, Angel, Rupert Giles, and Cordelia Chase," Dick said. "After them, we have those who came in and out of the Slayer's life, such as Amy Madison, who we could potentially make into bigger allies. Finally we have those who were not there from the beginning, like Wesley Pryce, who are ability to influence is limited by the time he was present."

"The key is, the shorter the time they would be around the Key, the less opportunity, but the bigger the impact," Ravil summarized.

Dick smiled to himself. There was one other detail, but he didn't want to bring it up just yet. Ravil would probably go crazy if he knew.

Ravil grasped the thread he had pulled on earlier. It was the image of Xander on the steps of Sunnydale school, but instead of just seeing Buffy, he now saw Buffy and Dawn walking in together.

He saw a lot of times flash through. Many Dawn would not fit in. Some were just inaccessible, time was fickle like that. But he was able to find six opportunities. He looked to the other monks for their thoughts on what to do.

1. Darla the night before the first day.
2. Buffy with Principle Flutie
3. Xander and Buffy's run in together.
4. Angel and Buffy encounter in the alley.
5. Darla trying to entice Xander and Willow.
6. Angel alone in the Bronze.

*Bolded names are potential allies.

How this will work -

The format here is a little more complex and thus a we're going to use comments, not polls. If I receive multiple comments and there is disagreement, I'll favor those who have been frequent commenters in the past

On each turn there is a 1 point, a 2 point, and a 3 point scene of the six options. Additionally a color is taken from each of the three scenes that are picked and the same color cannot be taken more than once per episode.

• 1 point: Dawn appears and gets closer to the person(s) in the scene. However, she messes something up, either leading to a break down in relationships between others or weakening someone.
• 2 points: Dawn appears in the scene and grows closer with those involved. No other effects.
• 3 points: Dawn appears, grows closer, and strengthens those in the scene.

Additionally, the 1 point has the strongest sex affect, while 3 points has the weakest.

Like my previous stories: you can't have everything go right and what type of sex scenes occur will be kept as a mystery that readers may be able to figure out as the story develops.